Jobs at Mercy Corps

General Position Summary

The DCOP / Technical Director is a key member of the Scaling Inclusive Food Systems senior management team and is responsible for leading the strategic intervention of program activities. They are responsible for the design, management and implementation of the program, including ensuring effective operations. The DCOP / Technical Director will work closely with the Chief of Party to drive the program’s strategic approach and ensure strong technical models are translated into high quality operational plans and interventions. They will directly manage implementation and technical teams in order to operationalize systems, structures, and processes that enable high quality, decentralized program implementation tailored to the local context. 

Essential Job Responsibilities

STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

• Works closely with the Chief of Party (CoP) to develop and guide overall strategic and technical vision and drive the program’s innovative, evidence-based, adaptation approach.
• Ensure program vision, implementation modalities, and operational mechanisms are consistently communicated and internalized by all program team members, partners and stakeholders; facilitate by-in across partners and stakeholders.
• Recognize opportunities for innovative action and create an environment where alternative viewpoints are welcomed; promote and model a culture of learning and adaptive management.
• Operationalize strategic linkages and coordinate across technical, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and learning teams at implementation level, to further technical excellence, learning and impact, and ensure coherence of program components.
• Serves as the technical focal point for the program with Mercy Corps’ Technical Support Unit (TSU), Research, and PaQ teams – as well as technical advisors from consortium partners.
• Promotes a multi-sectoral vision to the program through active participation, accountability and performance-based reviews with technical teams - engages technical expertise for support and integration, when required.
• Supports the development of a program-wide resilience-building framework to guide coordination and integrated implementation in collaboration with the Resilience TSU.
• Identifies internal and external trends that will inform and address implementation challenges and any need to pivot programming.
• Prepares, supports and assures team readiness to adapt to changing conditions and expectations.
• Supports quarterly/annual reflections, work plan and implementation reviews, reporting, development/adaptation of integrated strategic work-plans for the program.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT AND QUALITY

• Manages the consolidated consortium workplan and is responsible for execution and tracking of work plans, ensuring the program is on time, on scope, and on budget, and that program plans are well coordinated with operational support functions (procurement, people and culture, etc.). Ensure that the program work plan consistently is adaptive to learning and contextual changes.
• Adapts and develops context and program-specific guidance, tools and training to advance the integration of resilience-thinking and evidence to impact into program systems.
• Leads the continuous review and adaptation of detailed implementation plans, flowing from annual workplan development, and supports the delivery of the same.
• Ensure adaptive management, learning and reflective practices against work plans are adopted across the implementation team and facilitate improved decision-making.
• Inform program systems to ensure the intervention is generating relevant information that is being used for ongoing learning, program analysis and decision-making while also capturing results at the output and impact level.
• Inform and actively participate in pause and reflect sessions, sense-making workshops and ongoing program adaptations; ensure program data is used for learning and decision making.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATION

• Provides oversight and coordination of all learning, M&E, and research efforts to facilitate information flow and the utilization of evidence in programmatic decisions and adaptive management.
• Supports information systems and procedures to ensure easy access to and utilization of evidence collected and processed by the program team.
• Develops the capacity of the program teams to capture and package success stories (including resilience storytelling) and learning; supports in the packaging of content and information for key internal and external audiences.
• Oversee the scheduling and production of formal and informal reports on all aspects of the program in a timely and efficient manner.

TEAM MANAGEMENT

• Creates and sustains a work environment of mutual respect and accountability where team members strive to achieve excellence on their own team and embrace their role and responsibilities in advancing the shared goals of the program
• Empowers and supports teams to advance leadership in their fields and support professional growth, including creating space for field teams to engage in senior level discussions.
• Contributes to team-building efforts, helps team members identify and problem-solve complex issues - ensures all team members can effectively collaborate and leverage internal and external knowledge and information.
• Assists with the hiring and on-boarding of senior team members, ensuring they are set up for success and familiar with agency systems, procedures, and protocols.
• Develops and nurtures a culture of innovation, collaboration, and information sharing for purposes of adaptive management and learning across the entire program team.
• Ensure high quality performance management systems for each team member to promote accountability; communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback informally and formally via regular one on ones and performance reviews.

FINANCE AND COMPLIANCE

• Ensure compliance and transparent use of resources in line with donor and Mercy Corps policies; manage implementation budgets in compliance with donors regulations while applying financial flexibility to meet program needs.
• Monitor program activities to ensure adherence to grant agreements, Mercy Corps’ policies and procedures and other relevant regulations, including those of USAID and the Government of Kenya.
• Work closely with support functions in Kenya, regional and headquarters to ensure highest compliance and program performance.
• Ensure all interventions adhere to Mercy Corps’ Gender Policy, Do No Harm principles, and beneficiary accountability standards.

INFLUENCE AND REPRESENTATION

• Lead the socialization of the program with Government stakeholders, USAID, Technical Steering Committee ensuring necessary approvals and collaboration as required.
• Contribute to program visibility and advocacy work by assisting in the dissemination of program research and learning information. Represent Mercy Corps in forums with the broader humanitarian and development community.
• Identify, build and manage collaborative partnerships with consortium partners, sub-grantees, donors, local governments and other stakeholders.
• Actively contribute and collaborate with regional and global counterparts to promote best practices within the program.
• Communicate effectively across teams and partners to ensure overall project targets and donor obligations are met.

SECURITY

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies as determined by country leadership.
• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies.
• Work closely with the country team’s security focal point to develop and maintain systems that promote the safety and security of all team members.
• Ensure that programs are designed and implemented with a clear analysis and understanding of security.

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Chief of Party

Works Directly With: Country Director, Director of Programs, Program Managers, Finance Director, Operations Director, People & Culture Director, HQ Regional Program Team, HQ Technical Support Unit.

Knowledge and Experience

• BA/S in agriculture, business, economics, public policy, international development or other relevant field, MA/S is strongly preferred.
• Experience leading large, complex programs required, with previous experience as DCOP or Technical Director highly beneficial
• A minimum of 7 years' experience, including 4 years in a senior management position.
• Strong skills and a track record in strategic visioning, leadership, and inspiring teams.
• Effective personnel management, coordination, and decision-making skills, with proven ability to be accountable for all components of the program.
• Competent in building networks, strong problem-solving skills, and ability to influence with effective listening, persuasion, negotiation and other techniques.
• Prior management experience within USAID funded programs is critical.
• Internationally recognized qualification in project or program management, or a commitment to obtain the qualification in the early months of work.
• Persuasive written and oral communication in English, including report writing; competency in a relevant local language beneficial.
• Demonstrated technical expertise in food systems, market systems development and/or agricultural sector required.
• Experience in Kenya preferred, with prior experience in the Arid and Semi-Arid lands is an added advantage.
• Experience managing locally-led, innovative and evidence-driven programming is critical
• Demonstrated attention to detail, ability to follow procedures, meet deadlines and work independently and cooperatively with team members is an asset.

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The Position

The CLA Lead will ensure that collaboration, learning and adaptation is not only integrated but fully operationalized in program design and implementation. This means driving coordination with others, making evidence-based decisions, and iteratively adapting throughout implementation to remain relevant and on course.

The CLA Lead will be responsible for leading strategy discussions, providing technical assistance and developing successful mechanisms for collaboration, learning and adaptation using USAID CLA principles and framework. They will use USAID’s Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) principles to effectively integrate real time monitoring and learning back into the project strategy and implementation and ensure knowledge is shared with the broader stakeholders. The CLA Lead will work in close collaboration with the Mercy Corps Performance and Quality (PaQ) team, MEL staff, program learning staff, and partners to ensure program outcomes are effectively measured, learning is captured and the approach is adapted. In consultation with the program team, they will be responsible for developing, coordinating, maintaining and constantly improving the program-wide CLA system, as well as implementing an internal CLA capacity-building strategy that trains and mentors staff and promotes a culture of learning.

Essential Responsibilities

STRATEGY AND VISION

• Provide leadership, training and mentoring in the development of CLA Plans, CLA tools, survey design, methodology, data analysis, and other skills required for assessing the impact of the program.
• Provide technical contributions to CLA efforts to ensure the program aligns with any Government of Kenya standards; Gender Diversity and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) standards; and Conflict Sensitivity into all activities as appropriate.
• Collaborate with external evaluators on the design and roll out of the program baseline, midterm and final evaluations, while setting up effective systems for learning.
• Lead the program’s learning agenda, measurement and prepare/document adaptive management measures put in place (this may include sharing with wider internal/ external audience).
• Drive the implementation of frequent pause and reflect meetings, which contribute to adaptive management.
• Participate in the facilitation of strategic planning sessions.

MANAGEMENT

• Lead program and MEL teams to adopt a holistic program-level CLA system.
• Ensures programs use the necessary CLA systems and tools, to inform and improve each individual program, as well as feed into the broader country-level CLA system, CARM, and Kenya country strategy.
• Strengthen CARM  (Community Accountability and Reporting Mechanism) practices, work closely with the program team to come up with innovative ways of promoting CARM, and ensure programs use Community Accountability and Reporting Mechanism data to inform and improve implementation as well as feeding into documentation of best practices.
• Lead on aligning, collecting and reporting on relevant food security, nutrition, and CLA indicators to the organizational-wide MEL systems, and other external systems as relevant.
• Ensure that teams are collecting sex and age disaggregated data and using gender sensitive data collection methods to understand and respond to program results with diverse participants.
• Provide guidance, recommendations, and leadership to ensure that the CLA systems meet the needs of program leadership and help address shortfalls in CLA that affect program implementation.
• Prepare analysis from available sources including MEL findings (e.g. lessons learned, program monitoring, and surveys/ evaluations), CARM, field challenges, and lead sessions to develop adaptive management guidance/ recommendations.
• Contribute to program design to ensure compliance with Mercy Corps’ PM@MC minimum standards and CLA best practices.
• Develop program and operational reporting templates that facilitate the acquisition, aggregation and flow of information in programs.

CAPACITY BUILDING AND MENTORING

• Develop and oversee implementation of the CLA staff and partner capacity building strategy that promotes a culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection of program data.
• Build the capacity of all relevant team members to develop and maintain an excellent CLA system, including regular reflection and analysis of program monitoring data.
• Work closely with the Chief of Party (CoP), program team, Human Resources and Finance to ensure that CLA skills are incorporated into all program position descriptions and positions are budgeted for.
• Contribute to the knowledge management repository with best practices in CLA and ensure that it is accessible to all staff and partners.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.

 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COORDINATION

• Actively contribute and collaborate with regional and global counterparts to promote the use of CLA best practices.
• Strengthen linkages with other internal resources, including the Digital Library and the Hub to enhance organizational learning where relevant to CLA.
• Maintain close working relationships with CLA counterparts in other relevant international actors and food security, cash and education actors in Liberia and the region.
• Participate in workshops and learning-related activities and their inclusion in the program workplan.
• Attend relevant learning events hosted by other partners as well as implementation of sector-specific learning events with partners and local stakeholders.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING

• As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve, we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.

ACCOUNTABILITY TO PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

• Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to program participants and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging beneficiary communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• BA/S degree in development studies, research methods, statistics, economics, social sciences, project management, MA/S strongly preferred.
• 5+ years of progressive work experience in collaborative research and development programming required with proven use of program technology.
• Experience with theoretical and practical background in MEL and skilled in participatory qualitative and quantitative M&E methodologies and techniques preferred.
• Experience with data management including the ability to structure and collate data sets for ease of analysis preferred.
• Proven experience with systems thinking or systems approaches to programming.
• Proven experience developing iterative learning systems or ‘feedback loops’ within development programs or organizational learning contexts.
• Experience mentoring and building technical capacity of individuals and institutions.
• Knowledge of food security, cash transfer and/or school feeding programs is a plus.
• Excellent computer skills (especially Microsoft office applications) and ability to use information technology as a tool and resource.
• Demonstrated experience in training and capacity building across diverse teams and partners.
• Excellent project management, time management, and organizational skills. Multi-tasking skills and ability to work under pressure.
• Strong writing, editing, public speaking skills and good leadership skills.
• Ability to summarize and simplify complex information and communicate it to the targeted groups.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills.
• Exceptional English writing skills.
• Previous experience in Kenya or similar context is essential